Need a New Booth? Put Out an Exhibit RFP

Ready for a new custom booth, but don’t know where to start? You might consider putting together an RFP (Request for Proposal) and sending it to 3 – 5 exhibit fabricators.

There’s more than one way to approach this: hire a design team to create several concepts and then issue the RFP to fabricators. Or start from scratch and put out the RFP for both design and fabrication.

Since you’re creating a custom exhibit that you’ll use for years, take your time: after every show, make notes about what works and what doesn’t with your current exhibit. Document what your employees and visitors say. Hold project meetings, get staff input and keep a file.

When it’s time to issue the RFP, make it as thorough as possible. Issue the RFP to a handful of exhibit house, be upfront about how many companies you’ve invited to respond, and make sure the budget and timetable are realistic for what you want. If you can pull that off the chances of creating a fabulous exhibit has increased a hundredfold!

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If you don’t happen to know any booth design firms you might want to consider publicly announcing your RFP on the RFP Database, which will enable you to receive proposals from lots of companies that would be interested in bidding on your project at no cost to you. In addition you’ll be able to find similar RFPs that you can review and use as a template to compose your own RFP with.